In a fascinating Vox Tablet podcast discussion of the major role of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and his son, Zvi Yehuda, in the history of religious Zionism and the Kooks’ influence on the so-called “settler” movement, Rabbi Shai Held speaks of the dangers of this increasingly influential theology in Israeli politics. Paraphrasing Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Rabbi Held, the co-founder and dean of an egalitarian yeshiva in New York, warns:

This is really dangerous stuff. This is dynamite that you’re playing with. The combination of messianism, a sense of the ontological difference and superiority of the Jews, a sense of the ontological uniqueness of the Land of Israel, the increasing embrace of militarism; all of this, combined, is like a powder keg.